Chapter 20: Taxes

“Alright gentlemen, congratulations. You have just won yourself a job.” After getting to know everyone, Jiang Hai gave the confirmation to hire these people.

After hearing Jiang Hai’s words, everyone was excited. They never thought it would be this easy to find a new job. The only thing left now, is their wages.

Since Jiang Hai gave Robins a weekly wage of 800, then their wages won’t be much lower. Burke and Philemon received a monthly wage of 750, while Harman and Bell receive 700 a month. This is only their base wages, if there is any special situation, then of course there are bonuses. Having confirmed everyone’s wages, everybody relaxed for the first time.

Unfortunately, brewers and fishermen can’t be found here. According to Philemon, they have to go to a different place to find the fishermen they need. Winthrop is a coastal town so they can only find cowboys at cowboy’s song, but mariners are much easier to find. After finishing all negotiations, the two drove Robins’ old pick up and returned to the estate.

“Well. at least the farm is pretty much set up now.” Muttered Jiang Hai within the car. Hearing this, Robins can’t help but laugh at his naïve thought.

“Hey boss, your thinking is too simple. Now that we have the people, we need to go pick out the cows we are going to raise. Oh, right boss. How many heads of cattle are we going to raise? We also need to buy some shepard hounds. Then there is the specialised truck to transport the cows. We can’t always rent those, since the amount we need and the frequency of use is just too high. Lawn mowers and some machines for cleaning out the cow shed are also needed. Wow, I haven’t ranched for a while now, but thinking about it again, it is still a troublesome business.” This are just the problems associated with ranching, there is also the fishery. However from Jiang Hai’s point of view, farming fish is much easier.

Because of his blood, as long as he dilutes it and spreads it into the water, then the fish definitely won’t run off. There is also the possibility of attracting larger fish. But obviously, there is no way Jiang Hai can tell this to Robins.

As for how to raise these cows, he thought about it. Straight up feed them his blood? That won’t work. But if he dilutes it and spreads it on the grass, then when the cows eat, even if it loses some of its power, most of it’s effects will still remain (2). Sadly, this means that he has to bleed again, but at least it will only take a day to recover, which is not too distressful.

“Dogs? What type of dogs?” Jiang Hai asks back.

“Well, there are a lot of areas to pay attention to.” Robins said.

Cattle dog are very similar to shepard hounds, but they need to be much smarter. This is because although cows have a temperate nature but they have strong power, with some likelihood to retaliate. Currently there are 4 breeds to chose from. Australian cattle dog, Belgian cattle dog, Swiss mountain dog and German herding dogs. Generally German herding dogs refer to German shepherds. Choosing cattle dogs is mainly based around how smart and powerful they are.

Some people say, no breed is as smart as the scotch collies but they are just too weak. In comparison breeds like the caucasian and doberman pinscher have the power, but they’re just too stupid. However these problems don’t concern Jiang Hai since he has the power to change a dog’s wisdom, it’s just that no one knows about it.

Apart from dogs, they still need to buy trolleys. These trolleys are not the hand pushing kind, rather, they are the ones that get connected to a pickup. As such, they also need a big pickup truck. The greater the horsepower, the better.

There is also the need for cleaning machines. Think about it, how many feces are 20,000 heads of cattle going to excrete? If it’s only a couple of hundred cows then it’s still possible with man power, but 20,000 heads? They can’t even finish after a couple days. Hence the need for an automated system. Cleaning out the shed when the cows are out grazing and before they come back at night is not a simple task.

Thinking about all the things that he still need to do, Jiang Hai can’t help but have headaches. He is a very lazy person and hate troubles. But from the looks of things, he dug himself a hole and jumped into it. Money is earned to be spent and he isn’t going to sell this place, so he accepts the fact that there are some things that he need to do no matter what. After comforting himself, Jiang Hai quickly remembered something Robins said previously.

“Oh right Robins. You said earlier that I needed to report my taxes, report what taxes? I haven’t even earned anything yet.” Jiang Hai asked. Hearing this, Robins looked at Jiang Hai blankly before explaining.

In China no matter which forum or website, there are always a few that sell the good points of western countries. They say the living standards are great, how great the air quality is, how good the food is, how great it is to stay there, how much more they earn and so on. They literally boasted them over the moon. Sadly there is only one which no one talks about because this point is seriously better in China than in western countries.

That is, the amount of taxes the government takes. In China, the amount of people who know that there is a tax collecting system is very little. The maximum amount of tax the government can take away from someone in China is only 20%. Compared to western powers this is nothing. Jiang Hai knew nothing of this. But now that he has a green card, he knows some of the taxes.

For example, the federal tax and state tax. The Massachusetts state tax is actually very little when compared to the other states. Even if Jiang Hai’s ranch made the highest profit margin, he needs to give the state only 5%. But the amount of federal taxes he has to pay is insurmountable.

Normally his super high tax rate is at around 39.6%. Counting in all the subsidies, that is still around 35%. Basically he has to pay 40% of his profits as taxes to America. At the same time he has to pay social security 6.2% annually (retirement fund). There is also the 1.45% medicare insurance fee. Of course there are several different ranks for this, but no matter what, almost half of what he earns goes to the government. Now the question is, he hasn’t earned any money so what taxes does he have to pay? Unfortunately, he is just to naive.

In America, everything costs money, including the air you breath. The piece of land Jiang Hai bought has an annual land tax. This tax does not care whether you earned anything or not. Especially since Jiang Hai owns a large piece of real estate thus the amount of land tax he has to pay is also at the top rank, 3.6% land tax. He also need to pay an average of 1.2% usage tax for the grassland and the fishery annually.

Since this piece of property is worth 280 million, then under normal conditions the land usage tax would be 3.36 million. This also does not take into account medicare insurance, education fees for his future kid(s) which is bound to be expensive as heck. Although the schools here are separated into public and private, but you really can’t get a good education out of the public ones (3). Instead private academies will provide great education, but their prices are just too damn high (4).

“Oh my god, my head!” Hearing Robins’ explanation, Jiang Hai can’t help but massage his solar plexus. He felt as if his head is about to explode. Why is there so much work?! There was never any mention of all these problems in America in all of those novels! Right now he seriously feels like he got lied to, he was to naive to believe them.

“If i knew this earlier then I definitely would’ve bought a piece of forest and lived there instead.” Jiang Hai muttered in chinese so Robins couldn’t understand what he just said.

It is truly difficult to live in America. According to the stats released in 2011 by the US government, a middle class family earns an average of 50,000 a year. Because the family has a house, 2 adults, 2 kids, a dog and 2 cars, when you subtract all the taxes from that 50,000 then they can only live under the help of subsidies. Don’t mention America, even in China, a yearly income of 50,000 yuan is enough for a single person. But if it’s a family then, hehe, if the kid needs to go to school? hehehe…. need to support the grandparents as well? ……

When Jiang Hai got back he didn’t go to sleep directly, but rather took a shower before sitting down to calculate his balance on his laptop. He specifically brought this laptop over from China because of the chinese operating system. He also knows the computers here are cheaper and better than the ones from China, but if you can’t understand what your looking at then what is the point?

Robins doesn’t know how much money Jiang Hai currently has, only Jiang Hai himself knows.

All those rocks added together sold for 332 million USD. The estate costed him 280 million. Out of the remaining 52 million USD you have to take away the renovation costs, all the other stuff he bought, plane tickets and stuff; which sums up to roughly 2 million USD.

Notes

1.2. Why couldn’t he just put it into the water they drink -.-
Tl: cuz the grass will remain after eating, so it’s like a one time thing with water3.4.

Now that the obligatory comment is posted. I’m really on the fence about this novel for the simple fact that he doesn’t even try to foresee what his money can do and let’s it flow out. I mean, spend 50 grand on someone to help him look over the estate, and the costs. I assume he could have gotten it for 200-210 million, since the company has goodwill from his cheap diamond sale and they would make a nice little profit on the land 😦